


When the Angel Readeth These Words

by Ghostinthehouse



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22789750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostinthehouse/pseuds/Ghostinthehouse
Summary: Aziraphale bustled over to gather up the things that had fallen out of the young woman's bicycle basket.One of the items was a leather-bound book, and he glanced over it automatically to make sure it hadn't been damaged. His gaze snagged on the title. "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch," he breathed.Or: the AU where Anathema and Aziraphale team up to decipher the prophecies
Relationships: Aziraphale & Anathema Device, Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Anathema Device
Comments: 18
Kudos: 215
Collections: Ixnael’s Recommendations, Ixnael’s SFW corner





	When the Angel Readeth These Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Beboots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beboots/gifts).



Aziraphale bustled over to gather up the things that had fallen out of the young woman's bicycle basket. He could feel the impatience shimmering around Crowley like a heat-haze.The faster he could shovel her belongings into the Bentley, the sooner he and Crowley could be on their way.

One of the items was a leather-bound book, and he glanced over it automatically to make sure it hadn't been damaged. His gaze snagged on the title. "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch," he breathed.

"She was my great-great-great-etc-grandmother," the young woman snapped, snatching the book out of his hands.

Crowley draped an arm across the top of the car door. "No, no, no," he protested as automatically as Aziraphale had checked the book, "this is no time for acquisitions, angel."

"Madam, I assure you, I would not harm you or the book."

"It's not for sale!" Anathema glared back at them from the back seat. "It would take the end of the world to prise it out of my hands. It's been in my family for over 300 years."

***

"So, next week, then," the driver mumbled, as he pulled up outside the gate of Jasmine Cottage. "If we're still here."

Anathema stared at him as a sharp, sinking sensation settled in the pit of her stomach. They knew. They had to know. And she still hadn't found the Great Beast. Unless the driver was the Beast himself? He wore sunglasses at night, he drove like a demon, and there was - there was definitely something very weird about him. About both of them, in fact. She cautiously focused enough to look at auras.

Love. Bright, dazzling, denied, love from both of them, overlapping, auras twined around each more than she had seen from a long-married couple.

But more than than that, the auras were the wrong shape. An aura was supposed to be roughly the same shape as the body it wrapped. These ones clung to arms and legs and head, and flared wildly out behind them, almost like wings. And there was no mistaking the pillars of fire and darkness at the heart of the shapes for anything normal.

They weren't human. And they were terrifying. And Agnes hadn't said a word about meeting them. Had she?

Anathema opened the book automatically to check, reading by the light of the passenger's glowing aura. She could almost swear there were dozens of eyes in it, staring back at her and trying to read the book over her shoulder. _When that the angel readeth these words, in the cottage of yellow jasmine, then the end tymes are certes upon us. Open thine eyes to understand. Open thine eyes and rede, I say, foolish principalitee, for thy cocoa doth grow cold._

She snapped the book shut and climbed out, clutching her belongings.

The passenger made a small bow. "There," he said, pointing to the bike which was, although she didn't think anyone had touched it, propped against the wall. "A perfectly normal velocipede."

"Bicycle," the driver corrected, with patent exasperation. "Get in, angel."

Angel. _When the angel readeth these words..._ "Does the phrase 'foolish principalitee' mean anything to either of you?" she heard herself saying. She had come to her wits' end, bounced over the final rail and buffers, and was now grinding her way along a torn up track in search of a replacement wit.

They both went very still. She wasn't sure they were even breathing. Then she was sure that they weren't.

"Yes. Well," the passenger began at last. "It isn't something one talks about these days. People will insist on making jokes about it."

"Why are you asking that, book-girl?"

She swallowed. If this was what Agnes had meant, and she messed it up, her mother would never let her hear the end of it. "I think you're in the book," she said faintly. "I think- I think Agnes was talking to you. In one of them."

The passenger's attention sharpened on her. "Really?" he asked, and without looking round at his partner, added, "May we come in?"

The driver groaned with resigned impatience and climbed back out of the car. "We have _things_ to _do_ ," he hissed. He glanced at Anathema, and lowered his voice still further. "How on Earth are we going to find _him_ , if you stop every five minutes for an interesting book! We save the world, and you'll have all the time to examine books that you want."

"My dear, Agnes Nutter is the only set of prophecies in the world that are completely accurate. If there is any chance that they can point us in the right direction, I have to take it."

"I thought you had a copy of every prophecy book, angel?"

"Not this one, dear. It's impossible to find."

"Ngk. Fine." He looked round and then lifted his head to stare up at the cottage wall. "Well. You go in then, if she'll have you. I'll..."

Anathema cleared her throat. "You can both come in. We should - talk."

The passenger followed the driver's gaze to the horseshoe above the door, set to keep evil out, and snapped his fingers. It vanished.

The driver raised an eyebrow.

The passenger blushed a little. "I'll put it back when we leave."

"Well then. After you, miss."

***

Inside, Anathema set her things down on the table and stuck out her hand. "Anathema Device."

The driver shook it briefly. His hand was smooth, dry, and cool, with a firmness that suggested a coiled strength behind it. "Anthony Crowley."

The passenger beamed. "Aziraphale. But you can call me Mr Fell if that's easier."

They looked no less weird in the light. Anthony was a long sinewy streak of black clothes, red hair, and dark glasses. Aziraphale was rather plumper, and looked like he'd walked out of a Dickens novel, all pastel shades and white-blond curls.

"He's the Principality," Anthony said, flicking his fingers at Aziraphale and then jamming them into the too-small pockets of his jeans. He leaned one hip against the table, and stared at her, clearly waiting for her to get on with whatever she wanted to say.

Aziraphale was too busy staring avidly at the book to notice.

"What are you?" she said. "I know you're not human. I can see it. Are you aliens?"

Anthony's gaze grew warier. "You're a witch."

"What if I am?" Agnes had mentioned cocoa. Anathema dug out mugs and instant hot chocolate, and filled the kettle.

"Been a while since I met one. And of course, they're more likely to call me, than they are him. Look, just let him read it, and we can be gone."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Ugh, fine. You're a witch, he's an angel, I'm a demon, and we really don't have time for all this back and forthing, book-girl."

Anathema absorbed that as easily as she absorbed the idea of aliens, kraken and conspiracies about Tibetan tunnels. Which is to say, it dissolved into the rest of her beliefs the way that sugar dissolves into tea - without so much as a second thought or a backward glance, just a little gritty smear around the edges. She poured water into mugs, stirred in the instant hot chocolate and passed them round, before picking up the book, opening it to the same page as before and sliding it over to the angel.

He produced a pair of small round glasses from somewhere, perched them on his nose, and took the book from her with gentle manicured fingers. He seated himself primly on one of her kitchen chairs and bent to read.

He straightened with a huff of breath, staring at the mug of cocoa, and then back at the book. "Well, it seems she's ordering me to read, even if she isn't exactly polite about it."

"She was like that," Anthony commented. "Wicked sense of humour. You should have heard her when she fished me out of the ditch, angel, you'd have liked her."

"What were you doing in her ditch?"

"Horse threw me."

Anthony had _known_ Agnes? How old _was_ he to make it sound so matter of fact? Anathema cleared her throat. "The End of the World is here, in Tadfield, on Saturday afternoon, about teatime. And somewhere around here, there's a Great Beast, but I can't _find_ it."

"Him." Anthony prowled the room, circling the table where Aziraphale sat, studying the walls. "He's a boy, eleven years old, got a dog for his birthday." He found the cupboard covered in connections and notes and stood studying it for a moment before he came sauntering back the other way. "He's got an automatic defense thingy. Suspicion slides off him like - like whatever it is water slides off."

"Ducks?" Anathema suggested.

"Yes!"

Aziraphale blithely ignored Anthony's pacing and turned back to the start of the book. A pad of paper and a pen appeared by his hand out of nowhere and he made notes as he read.

Anthony checked in mid-stride and grimaced at the sight. "No tearing him away now. Be here all night, most like." He leaned over and flicked through the final few pages without ever losing the angel's place. "Why doesn't this thing have an index?"

Anathema scowled at him, picked up the box of index cards and set it down in front of him with a thump. "It does."

He straightened, dark glasses finding her face, and she swallowed her frustration down. He wasn't the one who had taken over her kitchen table, and her book, and her family's lifework without so much as a word of thanks. "So it does." He sprawled into another of the chairs, and pushed a third out for her to take as he flicked through the cards, eyeing the scrawled notes around the copied prophecies with steadily rising eyebrows. "Lot of work put into these. Lot of thought."

Anathema felt her resentment ebbing under the man's clear approval. "My family has been working to interpret her words for 350 years. And now..." She looked at Aziraphale as he turned another page.

"Yeah, you have a point." He stretched out a long arm and covered the book.

Aziraphale looked up with a frown. "Crowley!" he exclaimed, and she revised which name she used for the black-clad man.

"You're repeating work that's already been done, angel. Look." He pulled out a card, showed him the notes that almost matched his own. "Give book-girl's family the credit, they've done a half-decent job, for humans."

"Oh." He took the card, looked it over, and flashed a smile full of warmth at Anathema. "Thank you. Three piles, I should think? Prophecies that have happened, ones that concern the Apocalypse, and unknowns."

"It isn't that simple..." Anathema said doubtfully, but she pulled up a chair and took a handful of index cards anyway. "It can't be."

Crowley took a handful too, and they all began to sort, interspersed with comments.

"Oh look, dear, you're in here too." _A street of light will screem, the black chariot of the Serpente will flayme, and a Queene wille sing quickfilveres songes no moar._

"So I am. Hasn't happened yet, stick it in the Apocalypse pile."

"My family thought that was a metaphor."

"Yeah, book-girl, but I'm the Serpent. And my Bentley only plays Queen."

"Oh."

"Huh. She got Warlock's party, angel. Apocalypse or Happened?" _1111\. An the Great Hound sharl coom, and the Two Powers sharl watch in Vane, for it Goeth where is its Master, Where they Wot Notte, and he sharl name it, True to Ittes Nature, and Hell sharl flee it._

"How very interesting. Apocalypse, I should think, it's still connected."

Crowley tossed it onto the Apocalypse pile and explained tersely, "We thought we knew who the Antichrist was, but the hellhound he was supposed to get on his birthday, on Wednesday, never turned up where we were. Been watching the wrong boy for eleven years."

More cards landed on the Happened pile. A few on the others.

Then Aziraphale paused, staring at the card in his hand. He swallowed. "Do you, do you happen to have a bible available?" _3817: The number of the Beast is in the revelayting of Sainte John, call hym in Taddes field. And ye will know hym by this sign, that when ye do call to hym, the Lesser Beaste will walk upon his hinde legs like unto a Dancing Bear._

Anathema shook her head.

"Pull one over from your shop, angel?" Crowley suggested, flipping cards rapid-fire into their piles.

Aziraphale snapped the fingers of his free hand, and an old book suddenly lay next to it.

It definitely hadn't been there a moment ago, and Anathema found herself staring, cards forgotten in her unbroken hand.

"Angels can do miracles," Crowley told her, his voice gentler than she'd thought possible. "So can demons, for that matter, and it's the simplest method right now, for some things."

"Six hundred, three score, and six." Aziraphale wrote it down on his pad. "Do you have such a thing as a directory enquiry on that phone of yours, Crowley, or do we need the real thing?"

"I'll check later, finish sorting first, angel. That looks like a candidate for Apocalypse."

Anathema took out her tablet. "What am I looking up?"

Aziraphale fluttered his fingers. "Thank you, dear. There, there may be a phone number in Tadfield ending in 666... If I've interpreted this right."

Rage and grief tangled around Anathema's heart. 350 years of research and care and interpretation, weeks of planning, days of searching, and Agnes went and gave the Antichrist's phone number to an outsider, a stranger. She swallowed it down. There would be time enough to cry and break things in the morning. For now, she immersed herself in research, and let the familiarity of that soothe her.


End file.
